One expressive Italian word sums up voters' message Tuesday to the 7th floor of Seattle City Hall, a mayor's office which has resisted the deep bore tunnel: "Basta!!!", which translates to "Enough!"

We've seen and heard enough in 10 years since the Nisqually (or Ash Wednesday to some believers) Earthquake nearly brought down the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and brought on a full decade of process known as "the Seattle way."

"If the public takes a look at all the risks and costs of this tunnel and says, 'It's worth it, we want to go ahead,' I'll follow their will. I live and die by the voters," Mayor Mike McGinn told the Seattle Channel last month.

Or as Councilman Mike O'Brien, McGinn's mini-me on the Council, put it in a City Club debate: "This is clearly a vote on the tunnel."

If you measure their words, McGinn and O'Brien have suffered a near death experience. The issue used to set them apart and propel them into office in 2009 - opposition to the deep bore tunnel - has now produced a landslide rejection of their position and actions.

Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy.

As well, their political judgment is subject to question. "I think we're going to hear in two weeks, 'They don't want the tunnel'," O'Brien told the City Club debate.

As a liberal tunnel supporter, Andrew Villeneuver of the Northwest Progressive Institute put it, "The anti-tunnel people just misread the electorate. Mike McGinn and Mike O'Brien look very bad. They are not in touch with the people of Seattle."

What now? Build the damned tunnel! The mayor should be true to his word and abandon his tunnel vision, and not fudge as he did with the 2009 promise not to fight the project if the City Council embraced it.

We are within the 300-to-400 year window of "The Big One," a major earthquake in the Juan de Fuca subduction zone that would cause the Alaskan Way Viaduct to pancake and crumble in seconds. The last such quake can be precisely timed thanks to cedar snags out at the Copalis River on the Olympic Peninsula and tusnami records from Japan. It came on January 26, 1701.

Hence, there's a sense of urgency to this project. We need to move the earth before the earth moves. Seattle is also "due" in a sense of showing it can move on a major project. We used to dream -- and pull off -- big dreams in these parts.

Decision-after-decision resistance by Mayor McGinn has obscured a constructive role the city can play. Worried about cost overruns? Erect the best possible oversight of underground construction. As the WPPSS nuclear debacle showed us years ago, big construction contractors are either at your feet or at your throat.

Life after Referendum 1 might even be liberating for McGinn. Hizzoner has suffered from an approval rating of 25 percent or so . . . entirely appropriate because he has been governing to a constituency of about 25 percent of the city's electorate.

Seattle is a city where everybody gets consulted about everything. The Sierra Club, Cascade Bicycle Club, the Transportation Choices Coalition, Streets for All Seattle - all these groups deserve a place at the table. But they do not deserve to eat the entire meal.

McGinn has received some sage communications advice of late. He didn't make much noise in the tunnel debate. He turns up regularly at good-news events and takes every opportunity to make common cause with members of the Seattle City Council. To really take that advice, however, Hizzoner needs to communicate with a broader network of advisers.

It's King County Executive Dow Constantine who does the heavy lifting, witness the $20 car tab agreement that headed off deep cuts to Metro. The City Council has gone around the mayor to forge alliances with Eastside city governments and work the Legislature.

The anti-tunnel Protect Seattle Now campaign made a tactic of attacking people during the summer campaign. Surely, the bitter-enders will now gripe about the $480,000 pro-tunnel campaign and 30-second spots on Cable TV, rather than the amateurish quality of their own videos.

Another person confident of an anti-tunnel vote, initiative pitchman Tim Eyman, sneered at a recent debate: "They're going to ignore your decisions in August . . . They're going full speed ahead regardless of what happens in August."

"They," as it turns out, are the voters of Seattle. And "they" have delivered to Mayor McGinn a message coined during a 1960's Civil Rights protest: Move on over or we'll move on over you."